Hundreds of Words
by CompanionWanderer
Summary: Drabble collection. Was Eilonwy-centric, now expanded to include entries to the Drabble Challenge.
1. Unreality

The writing bug bit; I must scratch the itch, but, not having any great ideas at the moment for something long and complex, am turning to drabbles and having a lot of fun. Brevity not being one of my strengths, I find the word limit (and I do hold myself to exacts) to be a skill-honing challenge.

You all know how I roll by now. These are all Eilonwy-centric, and romantic tension will come into play at some point. Probably more than once.

Prydain and its characters are the creation of Lloyd Alexander.

* * *

**Unreality**

She's afraid, the first dozen nights or so, to sleep.

Because it _might_ be a dream; the moonbeams slanting through the loft window, the smell of Coll's pipe and the crackle of the woodfire in the room below, the quiet murmur of male voices that _don't_ make her skin crawl. It might all vanish like mist in the morning, and she'll wake up in her cold chamber in Spiral Castle, with its stark opulence and bolted door.

It is, finally, Taran's voice, shouting from below, to _shut UP and go to sleep already_ that silences the fears, and she does.


	2. Curiosity

**Curiosity**

Magic tastes sharp and metallic in her mouth. Saying the words is like licking a knife blade. She's never liked it, not even when it does useful things like opening locks. In Spiral Castle there was never anything pleasant behind locked doors, anyway.

But nothing's locked in Caer Dallben, except that always-shut Book. She's been shown silvery scarlines on fingers, but she stares at it, there on the table, until one day Dallben's hawkish gaze intercepts her and in one glance she knows _he knows_.

"No." She can hear the smile behind his whiskers. "You can't open _it_ with magic."


	3. Loss

**Loss**

One of the kids is a stillbirth.

_It just happens sometimes_, Coll tells her gently; while she sniffles over the damp, tiny thing, with its button eyes and thimble of a muzzle and wee hooves that will never press the earth; and Taran tries to remark that it's _just a goat_ and only the traitorous roughness of his voice keeps her from shoving him through the rail fence. And Coll is serene, quiet and practical, but when he turns away with its baby-frailty cradled in his coarse hands, a single drop falls from his eye, spotting the dust at her feet.


	4. Lesson

Jumping ahead a few years, and more words, because you can't rush moments like this.

500 words - do they call this a quintuple-drabble? They should.

* * *

**Lesson**

The sharp iron bounces harmlessly from the butt-end of a log for the fifth time, and she growls in frustration. Three years on a farm and proficiency at this task still eludes her. At his derisive snort she straightens, stiff, and glares in his direction. She hadn't known he was there.

"You're going to chop your own foot off," he predicts, and she glowers at him, shifting the maul in her hands as though considering alternative uses for it.

"I'm not the one who went out _fishing_ this morning without checking to see if there was enough firewood for the day," she hisses at him petulantly, "so maybe _certain people_ should keep their advice to themselves, or else try to be _useful _for once."

He flushes, grins sheepish, and is at her side in a few long strides. "Here, give me that."

"_No_." She pushes away his outstretched hand, irritated with him for never taking her anger seriously; with herself, for how his smile disarms her. "Don't do it _for_ me. Just show me how to do it _right_."

"Fine." He demonstrates. "Stand with your feet apart more. Now, spread your hands further out on the handle. When you swing, let the weight do the work, not your arms."

She is all awkward limbs and unfamiliar movement; metal bites mere splinters into the log. She filters an angry screech through her teeth.

"No, no, no." He's not quite successful at biting back laughter, but before she can blast him with the brunt of her outrage he's stepped around her, gripped the maul handle from behind. She's pinned in the space between his arms, her back firm against his chest and _Llyr_, when did he get that much taller than she? "Look, like _this_," and he covers her hands with his, shakes them loose of their abruptly convulsive grip on the handle, and slides them into the proper position.

"Now," he orders, into her ear, "keep your eye on where you want to strike, and swing it _this_ way." His arms bend and straighten and his body sways like a sapling, taking her along with him; iron cuts through air; wood slides through hands; a rippling crack; stillness. She barely sees the log fall away in two halves. She's too busy remembering to breathe.

It's difficult, because he hasn't yet let go.

"Think you can do it now?" There's a note of teasing in his voice, but if she turns her head to see his expression…she mutters "yes", thickly, though it's a lie because she has no idea what just happened.

"Are you sure?" His breath tickles her ear. "I can show you again."

She throws him off, shoves the maul into his hands, and ignores how cold her back feels without him. "No. _You_ can finish."

His eyes laugh green as he protests, "I thought _you_ wanted to-"

"Never _mind_." She turns; storms back to the cottage.

Because he'd never let her forget it if he saw her smiling.


	5. Yin and Yang

**Yin and Yang**

Sometimes she stares at its perfect spherical mass and wonders why it's gold. Gold, when it should have been sensibly wrought of pearl, or abalone, or even moonlight-silver as everything else had been inside Caer Colur, cool and shimmery and iridescent like the sea. But no – inexplicably, it is gold; its light blazes summer-warm like her flaming hair and _that_ couldn't have come from Llyr at first either, not Llyr with his dark-headed Selkie daughters and black swans. And always, the _not-knowing_ twists inside her, craving both the cold sea-darkness and the sun-gold light, and belonging to both and neither.


	6. Torn

**Torn**

For a moment, it's as though he's said something in a foreign language.

Because the words _I cannot come_ _with you_ are too utterly unthinkable for her to entertain the notion that he could mean them. So her first instinct is to laugh; but he won't meet her eyes, and the laugh dies before it is born and she blazes straight past fury to panic.

The words keep _coming_, and she wishes he'd stop because now they're all too clear; gentle words and noble and as merciless as armor-piercing arrows, every one of them straight to her heart, where there'd been no armor to begin with. She's dying inside, slain slowly by _words_, and the worst of it is they're all true, and so very, very _him_, and she can't even wish he'd chosen differently.

Because the irony is, had he done so, she could not love him so much.


	7. Compelling

My entry to PCL's drabble challenge: Fflewddur's first meeting with Adaon, keyword "broken"

Original can be found on the "Bards of Prydain" forum. This is the updated version.

* * *

**Compelling**

They stopped him mid-boast, as arresting as any broken string.

The piercing clarity of Taliesin's eyes was already unnerving, even when they were in Taliesin's face where they belonged. Seeing them shining from the face of his son was enough startle anyone used to seeing them elsewhere. They were so much _older_ than the rest of the lad.

Their intensity unsettled him less than his sense of their keen perception. There was mirth, not reproach in their frank light; yet he felt, under that grey gaze, that if all men had such eyes, his harp strings would be safe forever.

.

.

.

.

* * *

More than a small tweak! But this, although I may have traded some of the elegance of the original, conveys my concept a little better. I think. You all can tell me which one you like more. :)


	8. Double-Edged

Drabble Challenge: Pryderi's moment of betrayal

**Double-Edged**

"I am charged to deliver this into the king's hand."

The courier is weary, having ridden hard for days, but even in his fatigue he can sense the tension in the air. Men cluster in the courtyard; snatches of their conversation prick at his ears.

"An ill mood…"

"Ever since that emissary…where was he from?"

"All in black…"

"Hasn't slept…"

He is led to the council table, where the mood does nothing to quell disquiet as grim-faced advisers trade covert glances while their golden-headed monarch paces the floor. Parchments delivered, their deliverer awaits an answer.

Pryderi snorts at the sunburst crest on the seal, and his handsome face settles in hard lines as he reads. But suddenly he draws his sword from the scabbard and binds it naked to his side, raising eyes as grey and cold as the blade.

"Tell them I will come."

It is, somehow, not comforting.


End file.
